descend to brightness underground
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Listing Series
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for just a moment, a yellow sky by LailaLiquorice
Fandoms: Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical - SpitLip
15 Aug 2025
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Summary
Charles Cholmondely was a scientist; his purpose in life was to notice what a layperson could not. Big things about small creatures during his previous works became small things about big creatures once within the walls of MI5. But, with no bugs in a quadrat and no prospective corpses on a morgue table, the creatures he was left observing were the colleagues who had become closer than family.
It was Monty who worried him though.
[or, when tension cracks through the basement, secrets are revealed and apologies are made]
Series
- Part 1 of descend to brightness underground
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you were always gold to me by LailaLiquorice
Fandoms: Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical - SpitLip
07 Sep 2025
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Summary
“And perhaps you can finally bring that handsome man to introduce to us? We are beginning to think he doesn’t exist!”
A thick knot of dread had tightened in his stomach. The usual non-committal response died on the tip of his tongue as terror muted him; they were getting suspicious. They were seeing through his sham. And what if one lie unravelling led to another, and led to Stuart poking around in his business, and led to –
Nightmare scenarios and anxious spiralling aside, what it actually led to was Monty begging Charles to come down to his family estate for the occasion.
[or, when Monty struggles to step back into his old identity, gentle hands are there to catch him]
Series
- Part 2 of descend to brightness underground
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Summary
The black hole of shame that opened up beneath his chair might have swallowed him whole, if firm hands hadn’t materialised upon his shoulders. Monty’s hand found his under the table once he’d pulled up a chair, taking an exaggerated breath which Charles tried to consciously mirror. The black hole ebbed a little. He didn’t let go, just in case.
Yet Charles barely saw Monty outside of their shared duties in the office. What had become a slow waltz over the last several months, of bar crawls and shared meals and finishing paperwork in Monty’s living room when the winter chill made the basement uninhabitable, had suddenly ceased to exist.
[or, when Charles is left in the dark, all he can do is wait for his love to come home]
Series
- Part 3 of descend to brightness underground
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Summary
It was Charles who Monty put his arm around as the auditorium lights went dark. Jean couldn’t decide if this was a new pattern of behaviour, or if it was purely the stark contrast to their last theatre outing that had prompted her to take note. Monty had been a tactile person for as long as she’d known him, that wasn’t up for debate. But Charles relaxing into Monty’s arm rather than tensing beneath it was certainly a development.
Jean let herself be drawn back into the chatter as they walked to the underground station, hugging them both tightly before they waved her onto her train. Her smile fell apart as soon as she disappeared into the tunnel, wondering when their little trio had turned into one matching pair and Jean trailing behind.
[or, when Jean fears she's falling behind, misunderstandings threaten to tear them apart]
Series
- Part 4 of descend to brightness underground
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let the ultraviolet cover me up by LailaLiquorice
Fandoms: Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical - SpitLip
15 Nov 2025
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Summary
Ever since she could remember, Jean had needed to feel tethered to the ground. It was why she adored her basement office, despite Charles’ frequent sneezing as the dust aggravated his allergies. Sometimes she would take off her shoes and feel bedrock beneath her feet, the gentle claustrophobia of brick walls and ceiling above embracing her when the world felt too cruel. The whole of London could see her from her neglected desk in the typing pool; here, hidden beneath the ground, she was safe.
In a second-floor Shoreditch apartment, she was not. The tiny room was just about big enough to squeeze in a twin bed, the rest of the space taken up by a sense of intruding where she didn’t belong.
[or, when Jean finds herself out on her own, the secret is kept until it's almost too late]
Series
- Part 5 of descend to brightness underground
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the sea is wine red by LailaLiquorice
Fandoms: Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical - SpitLip
28 Nov 2025
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Summary
Time had never been linear in Hester’s mind. Of course she knew objectively that the years went by in due course, knew it better than most with a career spent keeping the war office’s diary in order. But outside of her secretarial duties, time never stopped being dichotomous as merely before and after. Before, there had been neither Tom nor Hester. During, there had been Tom and Hester. And then came after, where there was only Hester.
She wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, to keep John thinking about what she guessed to be his own before. Because surely that was how it worked for everyone who had lost the person they thought they’d spend their life with.
She wondered if Tom would have suffered the same, had he survived to see war take hold again.
[or, when Hester is forced to relive the worst days of the war, it comes to light that she is less alone than she thinks]
Series
- Part 6 of descend to brightness underground
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Summary
The first time that Hester was called a mother, there was no baby in her arms. It wasn’t in a maternity ward with a handsome man holding her hand as most mothers-to-be awaited eagerly for. Instead, it was in the familiar backdrop of the typing pool, with a mortified young woman stood behind a desk like a deer caught in the headlights.
Miss Leslie was far from the first girl to look up at Hester with wonder in their eyes upon reiterating ‘it’s Miss Leggatt,’ even if she was the first person to call Hester ‘Ma’ in the midst of a workplace conversation. She’d needed a lot of guidance it was true, but it didn’t take a genius to elicit from Jean’s clipped comments that she wasn’t getting any at home. If it took Hester mothering her a little more than etiquette allowed for Jean to find her feet, then she was glad to do it.
[or, when Hester and Jean find themselves adrift, they find solace in the presence of each other]
Series
- Part 7 of descend to brightness underground